2
Wednesday, November 9, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
O
P
I
N I
O
Robert B.
Reich
The Nugget
salutes our
Veterans
American Voices
with deep
gratitude for
your Service &
Sacrifice
Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let-
ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor.
The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be
no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday.
To the Editor:
After reading Liam Hughes’ commentary
entitled “What’s a little rain?” it is obvious to
me that he did not experience the Columbus
Day storm in 1962.
I don’t think he realized that the October
15, 2016, storm was predicted to have nearly
the same intensity. Those of us in western
Oregon were encouraged by the press, pub-
lic agencies, and law enforcement to avoid
travel and to stay home and prepare for poten-
tially long power outages and wind dam-
age. I think that played a huge role in the
empty stands at the OSU football game he
attended.
It seems it was an example of intelligent
people following the advice given them rather
than a bunch of “weenies” being afraid to
come out in the rain.
Joan Wood
Sisters Weather Forecast
Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
N
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Sunny
Sunny
Chance rain
Partly sunny
Chance rain
Chance rain
59/32
60/37
58/36
56/36
56/38
57/na
The Nugget Newspaper, Inc.
Website: www.nuggetnews.com
442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759
Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com
Postmaster: Send address changes to
The Nugget Newspaper,
P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759.
Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon.
Publisher - Editor: Kiki Dolson
News Editor: Jim Cornelius
Production Manager: Leith Williver
Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken
Advertising: Karen Kassy
Graphic Design: Jess Draper
Proofreader: Pete Rathbun
Accounting: Erin Bordonaro
The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area.
Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55.
Published Weekly. ©2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which
appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for
information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition-
ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently
available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts.
The parallels are strik-
ing. In the last decades of the
19th century—the so-called
“Gilded Age”—America
experienced inequality on
a scale it had never before
seen, combining wild opu-
lence and searing poverty.
American industry con-
solidated into a few giant
monopolies, or trusts,
headed by “robber barons”
who wielded enough power
to drive out competitors. A
few Wall Street titans such
as J.P. Morgan controlled the
nation’s finances.
These men used their
huge wealth to rig the sys-
tem. Their lackeys literally
deposited stacks of money
on the desks of pliant legis-
lators, prompting the great
jurist Louis Brandeis to tell
America it had a choice:
“We may have democracy,
or we may have wealth con-
centrated in the hands of
a few, but we cannot have
both.”
We face a similar choice
today.
Then, America chose
democracy. President The-
odore Roosevelt, railing
against the “malefactors of
great wealth,” broke up the
trusts. And he pushed Con-
gress to end the most blatant
forms of corruption.
His fifth cousin, Franklin
D. Roosevelt, went further—
enacting social insurance for
the elderly, the unemployed,
and the disabled; a minimum
wage and 40-hour work-
week; the right to unionize;
compensation for workers
injured on the job; and strict
limits on Wall Street.
In other words, between
1870 and 1900, American
capitalism got off track.
Between 1901 and 1937 (the
effective end of the New
Deal), America put capital-
ism back on track.
We’re now in the Second
Gilded Age, and American
capitalism is again off track.
Inequality is now nearly at
the same level it was in the
late 19th century. Half of
all families are poorer today
than they were a decade-and-
a-half ago. The pay of CEOs
and Wall Street bankers is
in the stratosphere. Child
poverty is on the rise. Mean-
while, American industry is
once again consolidating —
this time, into oligopolies
dominated by three or four
major players. You can see
it in pharmaceuticals, high-
tech, airlines, food, Internet
service, communications,
health insurance and finance.
The biggest Wall Street
banks, having brought
the nation to the brink of
destruction a few years ago,
are once again exercising
vast economic power. And
big money has taken over
American politics.
Will we put capitalism
back on track, as we did
before?
The vile election of 2016
doesn’t seem to offer much
hope. But future historians
looking back on the tumult
might see the start of another
era of fundamental reform.
Today’s uprising against
the established order echoes
the outrage average Ameri-
cans felt in the late 19th
century when they pushed
Congress to enact the Sher-
man Antitrust Act, and when
Democratic presidential
candidate William Jennings
Bryan fulminated against big
business and finance.
Some 120 years later,
Bernie Sanders — the
unlikeliest of presidential
candidates — won 22 states
and 46 percent of the pledged
delegates in the Democratic
primaries, and pushed Hill-
ary Clinton and the Demo-
cratic Party to adopt many of
his proposals.
At the same time, Don-
ald Trump, a faux populist,
has laid bare the deep dis-
contents of America’s white
working class, which both
parties have long neglected.
Not incidentally, Trump has
also jeopardized the social
fabric of America and nearly
destroyed the Republican
Party.
Hopefully some of
America’s current elite will
conclude, as elites did at
the turn of the last century,
that they’d do better with a
smaller share of a growing
economy fueled by a flour-
ishing middle class, in a
society whose members feel
the system is basically fair,
than in one riven by social
and political strife.
History has proven the
early generation of reformers
correct. While other nations
opted for communism or fas-
cism, Americans chose to
make capitalism work for the
many rather than the few.
The timing is right, and
the need is surely as great as
it was over a century ago.
© 2016 By Robert Reich;
Distributed by Tribune Con-
tent Agency, LLC
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.